Archives of Genesis8 Amstrad Page from 1999 to 2025 about utility, page 15 / 18







iMPdraw by Ast/iMP4CT, a preview of a paint program for Amstrad CPC old and plus

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You can test a preview of a new paint program for Amstrad CPC old and plus : iMPdraw by Ast/iMP4CT.



Samdisk v3.8 by Simon Owen, Amstrad CPC disks tranfers on PC

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SAMdisk v3.8 by Simon Owen is out since the 9th March 2014.

The utility supports transfers between floppy disks and disk images, and is designed to work with almost any soft-sectored disk format compatible with the PC floppy controller, including some copy-protected formats.

Low-level floppy device access requires the fdrawcmd.sys driver to be installed.

Version 3.8, last updated 9th March 2014
- Added support for SuperCard Pro .scp flux disk images (MFM+FM)
- Added --pll option to control PLL method with flux image scanning
- Fixed --head giving ambiguous option error due to typo
- Fixed KBI-19 format slightly overhanging track wrap
- Improved EOT handling of flux images containing just one revolution
- Changed --slow-step to --old-drive to better match usage


HxC Floppy Drive Emulator v2.0.18.4 available on Sourceforge

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HxC Floppy Drive Emulator v2.0.18.4 is available on Github.

It's an utility to create images to be used by the SDCard HxC Floppy Emulator, to replace the good old 3 inch disks drives of our Amstrad CPC.



HxC Floppy Emulator Manager V3 released by NoRecess

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The 3rd version of the HxC Floppy Emulator Manager is available.

It's a complete rewrite of the original software.

It features a new user interface (thanks Ced !), better support of the HxC Floppy Emulator device (detection, release..) and some critical bug-fixes.

Finally, it now allows proper exit to BASIC (Amstrad CPC's default shell).

The software remains available as a ROM.



New Amstrad CPC firmware by Syx et TotO

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A new Amstrad CPC firmware is available, written by Syx and TotO.

This Firmware was designed to get a better support of RAM and ROM expansions. Looking the future, not the past.

It don't work with BASIC 1.0 and no more support Tape by default. (need a ROM to manage it, that allow to improve it as new storages too).

So, the actual target is all CPC with BASIC 1.1 and floppy or HxC drives.

New features are :

  • Display RAM (up to 576K)
  • Display CRTC version
  • Initialize up to 32 ROM
  • Boot with [ESC] initialize only ROM 0 & 7
  • Mouse support under BASIC (see the previous FW test)
  • Fix the FR chars table, so all keys are properly displayed
  • CTRL+keys give usefull chars

Beware, you must use the 16 Ko files with an emulator. 32 Ko ROMs are to be used with a real Amstrad CPC.

Loading screen of an Amstrad CPC with firmware v3.12



CPCDiskXP v2.4 by Mochilote on CPCMANIA

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The last version of the CPCDiskXP utility is available on CPCMania.

  • DSKEditor - Small changes to fix problems with PCW. Single side dsk's seem to work perfectly in the editor and the emulator.
  • GENERAL - Sometimes the main interface buttons are cut off and can not be pressed (as shown in the image above), usually in Vista and W7 if you increase the default font size, is finally solved.


Samdisk v3.7 by Simon Owen, disks tranfers on PC

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SAMdisk v3.7 by Simon Owen is out since the 24th June 2013.

The utility supports transfers between floppy disks and disk images, and is designed to work with almost any soft-sectored disk format compatible with the PC floppy controller, including some copy-protected formats.

Low-level floppy device access requires the fdrawcmd.sys driver to be installed.

Version 3.7 (2013-06-24)
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- Added support for KryoFlux and DiscFerret stream images (MFM+FM)
- Added preliminary support for D4M (FD-4000) disk images
- Added hex output with --hex or -x, with limited hex using --hex-ish
- Added --no-gap4b to ignore gap data after the final sector
- Added --abs-offsets to show absolute rather than relative sector offsets
- Fixed 'extra byte' EDSK extension being used unnecessarily on CRC errors
- Fixed crash during CPC weak sector sniffing due to no-data 4th sector
- Fixed regular image reading reporting transient disk errors
- Improved support for ED images, including 2.88M raw images
- Improved gap reading support for IPF images
- Changed raw track parsing to ignore headers with ID CRC errors
- Changed raw image writing to use only first cyl to determine format
- Relaxed D2M sniffing by removing system partition type (0xff) check
- Reduced gap sync requirement to remove more unwanted gaps




Samdisk v3.5 by Simon Owen, disks tranfers

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SAMdisk v3.5 by Simon Owen is out.

The utility supports transfers between floppy disks and disk images, and is designed to work with almost any soft-sectored disk format compatible with the PC floppy controller, including some copy-protected formats.

Low-level floppy device access requires the fdrawcmd.sys driver to be installed.

Version 3.5 (2013-01-07)
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- Fixed interleave and skew values for Pro-Dos .cpm images
- Alignment tweaks to some output formatting
- Restored code signing to help download validation



GrafX2 v2.4 WIP, a graphical bitmap editor by Pulkomandy

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A work in progress version of GrafX2 is available to draw "mode 5" pictures for Amstrad CPC.

GrafX2 is a bitmap paint program inspired by the Amiga programs Deluxe Paint and Brilliance. Specialized in 256-color drawing, it includes a very large number of tools and effects that make it particularly suitable for pixel art, game graphics, and generally any detailed graphics painted with a mouse. The program is mostly developed on Linux and Windows, but is also portable on many other platforms.



Samdisk v3.3 by Simon Owen, disks tranfers on PC

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SAMdisk v3.3 by Simon Owen is out.

The utility supports transfers between floppy disks and disk images, and is designed to work with almost any soft-sectored disk format compatible with the PC floppy controller, including some copy-protected formats.

Low-level floppy device access requires the fdrawcmd.sys driver to be installed.

Version 3.3 (2012-06-14)
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- Added built-in support for zipped and gzipped files
- Added support for repairing 8K sectors with bad CRCs
- Added support for raw hard disk images
- Added identify device data reading, where available (non-USB)
- Added --hdf to force HDF version (10 or 11), with v1.1 now the default
- Added --no-identify to ignore source identify data
- Added --no-cfa to suppress CFA festures in generated identify data
- Enhanced identify to include  CHS/LBA28/LBA48 sector counts and CFA
- Enhanced verbose disk list to show serial+firmware and MBR partitions
- Changed disk list to show all devices by default, not just BDOS
- Fixed repairing to blank target tracks, with new density check
- Fixed HDD access beyond 4GB boundary, extended -s range to 2TB
- Fixed SAD image writing with custom sector sizes
- Fixed status messages being written to log and not erased correctly
- Improved FDC integrity checks during sector reads, for suspect hardware
- Improved total sector count to CHS mapping


CPCDiskXP v2.3 and programming tutorials by Mochilote on CPCMANIA

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The last version of the CPCDiskXP utility is available on CPCMania.

You will also find various programming tutorials, especially tutorials about using C compilers like Z88dk and SDCC, or assembler compiler like Pasmo.



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